I came across the following task in my book:
They carried/crossed 8,120km in the longest windsurfing journey.
Obviously "crossed" is intended to be the correct choice here, but I have never actually heard the verb used in this way. I'm more used to hearing "..crossed a river..", or "..crossed a road.."
Is it really appropriate to use "crossed" with an exact distance, or would "travelled" or "went" be the correct choice here?
When speaking of surpassing a record or threshold, you can use the verb cross.
Which communications giant was the first to cross one million and five million customer marks in India? [The Ultimate India Quiz Book by Derek O'Brien]
It's possible the author is thinking of the achievement as establishing a record.
But we don't have to resort to conjecture, since we can cross {a distance}.
When a measurement in miles or kilometers is presented as the distance, it is usually, but not always, with another noun in a partitive construction:
... crossed three thousand miles of ocean
.. crossed 200 miles of tundra
